


The sum of my parts

by Ygern



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Angst for days, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-01-08
Packaged: 2019-10-06 20:59:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17352488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ygern/pseuds/Ygern
Summary: James tries to make sense of his past relationships and his feelings for Lewis.





	The sum of my parts

How does one start these things? _I am born. Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show._ No, no-one could possibly be interested in my early years. Not even me, and I was there. I wasn’t a very nice child, I don’t think. I couldn’t have been; few liked me, not even my parents. Too smart for my own good, too easily led down the garden path. Too eager to conform even though I have little hope of pulling it off successfully. Maybe I should start with this: I lie. I’m good at lying.

My sexuality is nobody’s business, but I like women. You only have to look at my history to see that. My socks and ties are not my sexuality. Just because I don’t leer at all the pretty girls shouldn’t give anyone pause. No particular relevance can be assigned to the fact that my boss, some twenty-seven years my senior, gets more come-ons from hopeful women in a month than I average in a year. There’s nothing to be inferred from the fact that once upon a time a long time ago, I loved my best friend Will; it can’t be understood to mean anything. It can’t mean anything, because the day he came out to me, I laughed at him. In that moment it was as if a bucket of ice was poured onto the warm contentedness of my affection for him. Years of Catechism and bible verses rushed in to reassure me that I had come perilously close to being wrong, and I needed to be right. The look of betrayal and hurt on Will’s face nearly broke my scornful facade. For a moment I wavered, wanting so badly to throw my arms around him, kiss his cheek, tell him he would be okay. But I couldn’t. It took me months, maybe years to fully appreciate that the revulsion that made me laugh in his face and turn away was not about him. It was about me. I couldn’t be anything less than perfect, and if I was morally wrong, intrinsically disordered, then I wouldn’t be perfect, would I?

So, I like women. After all, I had married the most desirable and eligible one of all, Lady Scarlett Mortmaigne, at the age of eight. I’m aware, of course, that the vows one makes in the garden under the rose bushes at the age of eight is of questionable relevance to one’s later life. But then there was Fiona, whom I’d loved until I became an inconvenience in her meteoric rise through the ranks. Fortunately, we had both agreed from the start to keep our relationship discreet, office romances being a grey area at the CID, so there were few to witness my unceremonious humiliation. There would have been no witnesses at all had it not been for the sharp eyes of Dr Hobson, who one can only thank God never chose to to go into law enforcement or she would have put all of us out of a job. Her cardinal sin was to inform Robert Lewis, my boss, and between the two of them it was evidently agreed that this was license to meddle.

That brings us to Detective Inspector Robbie Lewis, my erstwhile boss, my mentor, my tormentor, my saviour and my own personal cross to bear; but more about that later. Lewis, under Laura’s prodding no doubt, took it upon himself to hector me into making peace with Fiona the night before she left Oxford for higher things forever. I will never fully understand what exactly he thought he was achieving with that. It wasn’t as if Fiona and I hadn’t parted in a perfectly civil way already, exit stage left, that sort of thing; but I’d had enough of fighting with him and gave in and let myself be led like a proverbial lamb to the proverbial slaughterhouse. Fiona was touched and amused at my eleventh-hour appearance, all shamefaced and tail between my legs, and interpreted this as a last somewhat desperate bid for a quick good-bye screw, pardon the expression. When I got home I spent half an hour retching into the toilet bowl and then scouring myself in the shower until my skin was pink. I was exposed for what I was: defective, not worth keeping, not only before the woman I had admired enough to give my heart to, but also my boss, finally taking pity on me in the one moment of my life I could have done without it. After that little adventure, I learned to be a lot more careful around Laura Hobson.

Laura, Oxford’s resident pathologist and long-time good friend of Robbie Lewis, has a quick tongue, a formidable mind, nerves of steel and the most inappropriate but lovely sense of humour I’ve ever come across at a crime scene. Had it not been for Lewis, I might never have been more to her than one of those innumerable interchangeable sergeants who cross her path every day. Because of him our orbits slowly intertwined until she and I were inextricably bound together. We’d become allies of a sort, team-mates in teasing Lewis and keeping him entertained. Then she became Lewis’s love, and I was Lewis’s – something. Sergeant for a while. Somehow, as the years passed, we’d become friends in a sort of indefinable way. He was lonely and bereaved when we first met, separated from his grown-up children and no doubt estranged from the friends his wife had cultivated over the years that they were married. He also had developed a tolerance for smart-arse, antisocial coppers while under his previous governor; so he and I fitted together in a misshapen, inelegant way. Laura used to poke fun at us for being the odd couple, each other’s better halves. Lewis had rolled his eyes at her, fallen in love with her, and then she’d won. She won him, and suddenly I was no-one’s half. I was just the remaining pieces of a once not-bad copper, rudderless and trying hard not to show it. By then it was too late for me to admit the truth that I’d been running from all my life. However, the one thing that I could admit to myself freely was that my secret truth wouldn’t have done me any good in the light of day. An admission would have served no-one, least of all me.

It’s funny how one’s fortune changes with time. In the decade or so that I’d known Robbie Lewis, my circumstances hadn’t changed very much. I’d finally made it to Inspector. That was the sum total of my achievements. But now I was middle-aged and had nothing much to show for it, just a respectable if entirely unexceptional career. I was still alone, still in my small flat that swallowed up a sizeable chunk of my salary every month, Oxford real estate being what it is, still using whatever car was available from the Thames Valley CID pool for my transport, still played medieval madrigals with my obscure group that few would ever hear, still surrounded by piles of books and cigarette rollies and empty coffee cups at home. But what might appear to have a certain glamour in one’s twenties becomes jaded and tired as the years progress: I smoked too much, drank too many cups of black coffee. Between these two vices I had become the recipient of sighs from my dentist who did his best to keep my teeth white, and an ever-diminishing ability to row my boat the extended miles that I once had managed. I was no longer the clever young sergeant with a promising future, envied for his fortune at bagging the much-admired Inspector Lewis. I was now a competent if unremarkable inspector whose own sergeant had hated him until Robert Lewis had coaxed her with his guileless smile and a sentence or two to give me another chance, accomplishing in minutes what I had failed to do in months. Every evening I go home alone, drink too much whiskey, smoke too many cigarettes, rinse, repeat.

I used to eat healthily, at least, I tried. I can certainly cook, that’s one of the strange unexpected benefits of my brief, poorly-considered time in the seminary. But as the years go on, and I endure bouts of the existential flu, so to speak; cooking sensible, attractive meals for one starts to lose its appeal. So much effort resulting in a lonely plate to be consumed in fifteen minutes, or forgotten entirely until it congeals if one gets lost in a book. I don’t have much interest in eating, so I am too-thin now, and certainly don’t get the glances I used to attract ten years ago, not from men or women. The only good thing my culinary skills have ever produced was real-time coaching for Robbie while he was wooing Laura with home-cooked dinners.

This probably makes it sound as if I feel sorry for myself. I don’t. I don’t care. I sometimes feel as if I exist with the mute button on. I only feel my life acutely when Laura or Robbie invite me over for dinner or a barbecue, and I am pulled into their circle of comfortable warmth and affection. They know me too well, and I can’t be silent for very long without inviting Laura’s shrewd eyes and Robbie’s sympathetic sigh along with a well-meaning salutary pat on the back from one of them. Sometimes it’s excruciating to be there with them, the two people I love most dearly, the only ones in my life who are prepared to take me as I am without trying to make me into something I am not. Lewis once tried to encourage me get a life, life as he understood it, anyway. He meant no insult or harm by it, he only assumed that a life-partner would be my salvation, my centre; as his wife had once been for him. Perhaps he is right. But there is no such person. Sometimes I notice that he hasn’t tried that line of reasoning on me since, not in a very long time. I’m grateful that I don’t have to have that conversation again, but sometimes I wonder if it is because they have understood now that I am broken. Robbie has certainly seen my clumsy and rare attempts at flirting. The botanist, for example, a woman who was both well-read and interesting, and more importantly, possessed a gentle, sweet sense of humour and flirted good-naturedly with me. She curtseyed to me, with a slightly mocking but not unkind smile, in response to my awkward, slightly-panicked bow when I suddenly ran out of words and didn’t know what to do. Lewis was less gentle in his mocking, although equally kindly, even then I think he knew – or suspected – that I was not really built for this sort of thing. I’m not even going to mention Zoe.

But there it is: the sum total of my romantic life. It’s not particularly impressive, it has to be admitted. The women I’ve connected best with have tended to be the older academic sort, women of outstanding scholarship, lithe mind and an irreverent sense of humour. Perhaps it is because they wanted nothing of me other than my conversation, my bookish tendencies for once being an appreciated quality. I don’t know. But they are not what Lewis had in mind when he encouraged me to get a partner.

Okay, I am going to mention Zoe. I had never attempted to pursue her romantically, I simply fell in with her, bound to her by grief and guilt. For a brief time after her, I went through a destructive phase, though I think I hid it well enough. Lewis never knew, or at least he never mentioned it. I know I said I’d never mention her, but it’s hard to acknowledge the one who tried to kill you. To this day, I don’t blame her. From a certain perspective, you could say I killed her. I didn’t literally kill her, of course. In fact, when she died I hadn’t seen her or Will in years. But my misguided self-hatred during my religious years had influenced both of them to their detriment. I know it wasn’t me alone who had set them on the wrong path, it wasn’t me alone who convinced them that they were wrong and disordered. I certainly wasn’t their only erstwhile friend that they could have turned to for support. JonJo tried to talk them out of it without success. But in the end they spiralled into disaster and death. Will killed himself and Zoe tried to kill those she blamed, not completely unfairly, for their part in his deed. When she tried to kill us, me and her, I didn’t fight, too stricken with self-hatred and sorrow. But I didn’t die, Robbie saved me. He pulled me out of a burning building when I’d lied and lied to him, and given him all the reason in the world to wash his hands off me. He forgave me, because that’s the sort of man he is. I paid him back by lying to him again when I gave him a Yorkie bar. I’m good at that; lying I mean.

Lewis kept half an eye on me in the weeks after, no doubt worried about the effect of almost dying and losing two old friends. But that wasn’t the half of it. I was wracked with guilt. I’d lied to everybody to hide my secret. My lies, my denial, had in subtle ways led to the deaths of so many people. There was no washing the blood off my hands. Lewis had told me to stop being so hard on myself, to stop holding myself to impossible standards. I’m not my brother’s keeper, nor my grown-up best friend’s, it would seem. Of course, intellectually, I understand that. Will and Feardorcha were adults, they did not exist in a vacuum, and many others had nudged them blindly and ignorantly onto the path they ultimately chose. But for months afterwards all my waking hours (at least, those after work when I was alone in my flat) were spent trying to re-write history in my head. What if I’d had the guts to walk out of the seminary earlier? Suppose I had told Will when he came to see me that God had to love him if He created him. What if I’d told him to marry Feardorcha and leave the pious vultures at The Garden far behind them and the angry-sad Zoe had never come to exist? What if, when we were fourteen, I had kissed him back and told him I loved him too? A thousand different paths could have been taken, all of them better choices. For months I ran down pathways in my mind, trying to fix the unfixable. I was averaging half a bottle of whiskey a night and surviving on four hours sleep. I started frequenting dank night-clubs, not the sort that JonJo (three nights, two days, when I was twenty, if you need to know) would have advocated; but I dreaded bumping into any of my old friends again. It wasn’t my smartest move, anonymous sex that sometimes turned rough is a stupid game of Russian Roulette that is guaranteed to turn out badly in the end. My first warning should have been enough for me to stop when a condom broke and I had an anxious six months of repeated testing and fearful waiting to make sure I hadn’t caught anything. Turned out, I was lucky that time. The warning that finally snapped me out of my stupidity came on a particularly windy morning on a crime-scene that SOCO was trying to contain against the gusts that blew the tree branches around and whipped leaves at our heads. I was walking oddly to pacify internal throbbing after a night in one of the clubs, with a scarf wrapped tightly around my neck to conceal bruising finger-marks. Then I saw it: Laura was watching me surreptitiously, a deep crease between her eyebrows. She had noticed me. I panicked, knowing it was only a matter of time before she pieced the whole sorry affair together. I couldn’t face disappointed looks from Lewis; or worse, his attempts at tea and advice, or at least what passes as such in the eyes of Robbie. So I stopped and returned to spending my nights at home with a book and a cup of coffee, sometimes laced with varying amounts of whiskey. I’m not sure it was an improvement, at least not by much.

For a while after that things settled into a comfortable routine. Lewis seemed resigned to widowerhood and I managed to refrain from lying much. Not even my ignominious return to Crevecoeur, site of my early childhood fantasy-marriage and other attendant traumas and even more lying from me managed to put much of a dent in our partnership, and I grew comfortable and smug in what seemed to be a life worth living. I didn’t care if I remained a sergeant forever even though I should have long made it to inspector, what with being fast-track and all. It was the only time in my life I can recall relishing getting out of bed because being at work was, dare I say it, fun? Robbie and I had evolved into a team. I admired him, he even appreciated me. Two halves of a not-bad copper, he said. It would have been enough for me, to go on like that forever. Of course, that’s stupid, I know things can never stay the same. Well, Robbie did always say he was the brains.

The first time he pulled the rug out from under my feet, he told me he was considering retirement. In an instant I realised I was careening over a void and I blurted out to him: “If you go, I go.” 

Lewis only ever paid light attention to my dramatic outbursts, so my declaration went largely unremarked and possibly unnoticed. He joked about getting an allotment with me, and I suddenly realised I wanted it to be real. The sword of Damocles didn’t fall that day, I got a reprieve and Lewis stayed on. I knew the status quo couldn’t last much longer, but I tried to convince myself that I still had time. Besides, there was another truth now, apart from my first not-so-secret-anymore truth, one that I did everything to avoid admitting to myself. I had felt it growing over the years and I did my best to ignore it. It was an unexploded bomb that could do no good. Lewis was more than my boss, he was more than my friend. He himself had said that the sergeant-inspector partnership was a lot like being married, and it was the sort of marriage that I was happy to commit to. But I wanted more. In my most secret moments I knew now that I loved him, and not in the platonic best friend and confidante way. I could never tell him – or anybody for that matter – because I was under no illusion about his sexuality. He knew what he liked. I knew what he liked. What he liked was women; mature, intelligent, sophisticated and down to earth women. Many had made their subtle and not-so-subtle overtures to him, some even in my presence. A few of them appealed to him too. None so far had been particularly successful liaisons, but it left me in no doubt that Lewis would ever suddenly confess to being bi or demi or any configuration that would leave any hope for me. For a long time that had been okay. We were both in limbo romantically, and that suited me fine. I’ve never been much of a romantic anyway, nothing but a pitifully small number of failed relationships behind me. Just being with Lewis, working at his side, walking shoulder to shoulder with him would be enough for me.

But then the dangling sword ran me through: I came back from Croatia to see Laura Hobson throw her arms around Robbie in greeting, and he kissed her joyfully in return. Neither of them could hide the happiness in their eyes. He looked years younger, the weight of the loss of his wife suddenly finally lifted off his shoulders. I was glad for him. I was glad for them. He deserved happiness, and Laura was perfect. She understood him, knew him, appreciated all his good parts. It was like being disembowelled and watching my life-force bleed slowly and painfully away. Fortunately Laura was too distracted by her new happiness that evening to be her habitual observant self, or I was sure my secrets would have been given away. No tears would fall that night, I could feel myself freezing inside, trapped alone in the imaginary world Robbie had once sketched out for us: an allotment, a sailing dinghy and each other’s company. That was what I had left to me: a fictional future in which I might have been happy. 

It got worse. The cases were grim and punishing, Lewis was looking forward to his new life with Laura and retirement finally looked appealing to him. It was an end of things and I was drifting out of his orbit, helpless and hurt. Eventually, I made one last confession to him: I couldn’t go on, I couldn’t be a policeman any longer. He was kind, because that’s the way he is. He told me we would still see each other, have a pint. Two ex-coppers.

Of course, I couldn’t even manage to resign successfully. I went through all the paperwork, sat through all of Chief Superintendent Innocent’s talks urging me to reconsider, give it some time, take some leave. I was adamant, but scant weeks later while I was on the ancient sun-baked plains of the Camino in Spain, nursing sunburn and three blisters on my feet I came to the realisation that life had beaten me. I had no desire to return to university and start all over again; I was too jaded and underqualified to get much of a job in academia (oh, isn’t that ironic? Clever me with a mostly useless degree), I could never return to religious orders. I had nowhere left to run. I couldn’t even finish my not-a-pilgrimage. So, I turned around, defeated; the most reluctant non-convert in England and went home to be a policeman again.

I didn’t expect to be greeted with much enthusiasm when I slunk back to Oxford. Innocent was triumphant that good sense had prevailed and insisted that I sit my OSPRE. I got a promotion, my old office back and my own sergeant who hated my guts before her first week was out. It was with complete horror that I saw Robert Lewis stroll onto my crime-scene one day, evidently enticed out of retirement by Innocent’s careful cajoling. It was all I needed, the man who knew me better than my own family peering over my shoulder as I worked my way through my first cases, second-guessing my decisions, sorting my sergeant, dispensing tidbits of advice; and all that while “respecting” my new position and not getting under my feet, if you define not getting under my feet as following me doggedly to interview witnesses, interrogate suspects and review my performance with Innocent in front of my face. My face must have shown my distress when I ran into Laura, she herself less than pleased at Robbie’s headlong dive back into active police-work without mentioning it to her.

“You miss him?” she said with a wry grin on her face.

“Always,” I said before my idiot brain could shut my mouth.

Luckily, she took this as sarcasm or twisted humour. At least, I hoped she did. That was last thing I needed. 

Laura and I had become closer after I pulled her out her own grave (long story, you don’t need to know), the old tensions between us put to rest for good. If not close friends, we saw each other as team-mates, as allies. She greeted me with teasing and smiles and occasional hugs and kisses, I accompanied her to events that Lewis would rather break his own leg than attend.

By turns, I was as snotty and sarcastic as I could be while in his presence, revisiting my smart-arse days of yore. In return, he gave me his gentle smiles and only once asked me obliquely about Spain, never pressing me for an answer. I was being my facetious, obnoxious worst and he knew he was no more likely to get a sensible answer out of me than he did the day I gave him all that nonsense about liking ‘Loaded’ and Yorkie Bars. Slowly I re-adjusted to work with Lewis in it. So it goes. When he flew off to New Zealand with Laura for an extended six month holiday, part of my heart went with him, afraid I would never see him again. Part of me hated myself for persuading him to go with her when he had a last-minute attack of cold feet. Part of me hated myself for even entertaining that traitorous thought. I could have said nothing and watch them grow apart. Lewis would have stayed (with me), and Laura would have given up on him. He would never have known how much I wanted that. Nor would Laura have known that I deliberately said nothing. But Laura’s happiness was now integral to Robbie’s and they fitted each other. I tried to tell him how much I would miss him when I took them to the airport, but I didn’t make a very good job of it and I don’t think he noticed. He just gave me a cheerful smile and headed off to the check-in area.

Laura kissed me, grateful for my words that had turned Robbie around, brought him to his senses. She has no idea how much prodding I'd done and all the unsubtle hints I’d dropped over the years to get him to make his move and snap her up. We had come a long way, her and me, from the early years where there had a been a slight tension between us, relative strangers but professional colleagues who both vied for Robbie’s admiration. Now that she’d won, and Robbie loved her, she had generously shared their life with me with constant invitations to dinners and outings and even put up with occasional activities such as my rowing Robert down the Cherwell in rainy weather to the accompaniment of as much snark as I could muster. But she’s Laura, and because she’s Laura I could feel her studying my face. I’ve always counted on my ability to blank my expression, but it’s hard to do that when you are saying good bye to two people you love. Her eyes widened slightly when she looked into mine, but she said nothing when she patted my cheek. I had the horrible sense that she’d seen my soul, if I have one. I had a feeling that she knew my secrets. I watched their plane take off and went home to a bottle of whiskey and a good book.

My days were more alone now, with no invitations from Robert or Laura. I’m not a particularly sociable person so I wasn’t about to take over from them and invite Maddox round for supper and drinks. You don’t do that with your younger, female subordinate anyway; thank God. It’s not that we don’t get on, she’s a lovely person. But I have less and less stomach for socialising these days, and she certainly doesn’t need me in any case. She has plenty of friends, newcomer though she may be to Oxford. It is I, born and bred in this place, who is solitary. I endeavoured to do one thing for Lizzie: be as good a mentor as I could be. I owed her, owed Lewis’s legacy that much.

I’d been left in charge of their house; of Laura’s pot-plants, Lewis’s lawn-mowing duties and taking their cars out for their respective spins once a fortnight. In addition I had father-sitting duties every other day with additional visits whenever I had time. I didn’t mention that before, did I? The remains of my family are still in Oxford. I’ve never liked them very much, and my father no longer knew who I was. Dementia is cruel. Life on the other hand, likes a joke or two. I saw more of him in my forties, when he no longer knew my name; than I had in all the years in between since I left for boarding school as a young boy of twelve. He had never had much time for me. My reading had once annoyed him. Once I discovered books at the age of five I could always be found buried in one, secreting myself in whatever corner offered me shelter from disapproving eyes. I didn’t fit in with his ideas of what a boy should do on their summer holiday. Only Lewis could bridge that gap between us, help him go fishing one last time and keep me in check when my father told me of his son who’d never learned to cast a line and catch a trout.

Too late for all that now. I read to him, there’s an irony, and held his hand, at least on the days when he didn’t cower from me when I appeared at his door, crying out in terror at the appearance of a complete stranger. Between my work, and my duties Chez Hobson et Lewis and my time at the rest home, there really wasn’t any space for life. It was probably better this way. 

My sister fumed at me, furious for all my flaws and the many times I had fallen short in her estimations. She too was of the judgement that I had never lived up to the role she had decided I ought to play. My family held very firm opinions on what I ought to be doing for them. It was a point of vexation to them that I rarely performed to expectations. I suspect that she could have found a great many people who would say the same in every place I’ve been. To head off Robert, who would have made our reconciliation his next mission, I lied again and told him some story of a silent retreat for sibling bonding. He really shouldn’t have believed a word of it. Family reconciliations are generally the product of counselling and talk, which is rather the opposite of silence. It was unusual for him not to pick up on my prevarications, and this one was on the level of Conversational Mandarin, but perhaps the religious aspect threw him off. Lewis holds no truck with faith and belief. I don’t particularly either, these days, but he doesn’t know that. Robert may know me well, but there is a great deal that we don’t talk about.

It was exhausting. I was getting used to a new routine of heading to bed shortly after arriving home, sparing only as much time as was needed to feed myself and down some whiskey. I would stand under the shower feeling hot water beat down on my head and try not to think. I received an email from Lewis three weeks after his departure, with photographs attached detailing their travels through much of the Southern Island on New Zealand, complete with a selfie, possibly a Lewis Original, he and Laura leaning up against each other at some scenic outlook. Both of them were tanned and grinning, and both of them were making bunny ears behind the other’s head. High comedy indeed from my former Detective Inspector. I barked out a laugh at this incongruous and yet perfectly Laura and Robbie tableau. I missed them both so badly that I could feel a physical ache in my solar plexus.

I was woken at six in the morning by a call from the home. My father had passed away in his sleep and they offered their sincere condolences. I didn’t cry when we packed up his final belongings; nor did I cry at his funeral, holding my sister’s hand this time as tears tracked silently down her face. In that much, at least, we are alike. We had learned to deal with our sorrows in silence at a young age. There was not much left to his estate, his time in the care home had eaten away at it. What was left was modest and I disclaimed my inheritance leaving my sister as the sole beneficiary. She gave me a surprised look when she learned that, but she didn’t argue. I couldn’t cry after we had parted ways either, with a stiff hug and a touch on her arm; my feelings were of relief and guilt at my relief. Regrets too, of course. It was only when I was home, looking at the photograph of Laura and Robbie again that the tears came. They didn’t stop for hours.

I have a lot of regrets. Chief among them is being a complete arsehole around Robbie in recent months, right down to calling him Robert when he distinctly asked me to call him Robbie. Why do I do that? Why do I try to aggravate him? He pays me back with little smiles and shakes his head at me when I am particularly obnoxious. If he ever thinks of me in New Zealand, that’s what he will remember: my being a tosser. No wonder he didn’t respond when I said I would miss him. Except I didn’t say “I’ll miss you.” I said: “You’ll be missed,” because God forbid I should ever be straightforward with him. Then I said, “You deserve to be happy,” as if giving him my blessing was something he needed or wanted. No wonder he lobbed that back at me saying, “So do you,” as if he doesn’t know me at all. By now he should know that I don’t do relationships, and when I have tried they have a habit of blowing up in my face. The only steady relationship I’ve ever had that has lasted for any respectable amount of time has been the completely non-sexual, non-romantic one with a man twenty-seven years older than me, and not in the least bit interested in bedding me or holding my hand. It would be too much to expect to find someone who likes me for my eclectic knowledge and reclusive ways, but at least I found one who doesn’t mind them. Of course he would be completely straight and in love with a wonderful woman; the universe likes a joke at my expense. I tell myself when he does come back – if he does come back – I have nightmares about that - I will be nicer to him. Behave like an adult instead of a brat. 

On bad nights I put myself to sleep visualising the allotment that Robbie once described to me. Sometimes it has a wooden shed in it, small and basic. Other times there’s a cottage and the allotment is more of a small garden, surrounded by high hedges of green. I dig beds and hoe rows and pick weeds out of the vegetable seedlings. Robbie tends to rows of carrots and vines of tomatoes in the little greenhouse. In the afternoon shade we relax on garden chairs at a table with a little radio that plays the cricket test match commentary and I read while Robbie leans his head back and snoozes in the comfortable heat. We drink pots of tea and when I rise to put the kettle on his takes my hand and gives it a squeeze as I pass. Our matching gold rings glint in the light before I head inside. While I am waiting for the tea to steep he comes inside behind me and pulls me back against his chest and we lean our heads together.

I sleep soundly and dreamlessly those nights, but I wake in the morning feeling guilty and wrong. It’s disloyal to Laura and a betrayal of Robbie. It’s not what he wants and I know it. Still, they will never know. Some mornings though, I am glad they are on the other side of the world because I would not be able to look them in the eyes. It’s no way to think of your friends, so I resolve to put the allotment out of my head. I promise myself that I will not think of Robbie in any other terms than my friend and mentor.

I go back to work when my compassionate leave is up, and apart from running the gauntlet of sympathetic words of condolence from people who have heard about the death of my father, life goes on. Maddox and I close cases diligently and Moody nods approvingly as the paperwork is finished and delivered to his desk. HR belatedly sends me an email offering me a link to a website that offers counselling for bereavement. I send them a gracious reply thanking them and delete the whole thread. Two weeks later I email Lewis to let him know that my father died. I hear nothing back, but as he is not of the generation that checks email compulsively, I am not surprised. In any case, he and Laura are on holiday and could be backpacking on a mountainside or canoeing down a river. That would be amusing to see, come to think of it. Then Maddox informs me reluctantly that she’s transferring to Edinburgh. Her husband has a new promotion and position there and they’ve decided that they have spent enough time apart. I tell her I understand and try to make sure her file goes with her with the highest recommendations.

Now I am truly alone, but I barely notice. Christmas comes and I go to midnight mass out of habit and spend the following day on call. It may as well be me, families shouldn’t be apart at Christmas time. It’s a fairly dull day, but in the evening a fire breaks out at a warehouse and those of us available are diverted to assist at the scene. I get home at five in the morning on Boxing Day, shower, make tea and toast and head back out to Thames Valley CID three hours later. I crash when I get home that evening and pass out on my sofa fully dressed and sleep until the following day. There’s a reply from Robbie and Laura waiting for me in my email offering their condolences and telling me that I should have contacted them straight away. I get annoyed at that. I wasn’t asking either of them to hop on a plane back to England. My father is dead. It’s not as if anyone can do anything about it. I’m on the point of deleting that email too, but I can’t do it. 

I’m in the allotment garden again that night, but this time I am alone. I turn the radio off and try to read. It doesn’t work, and for the first time in over a decade I feel that I am truly alone.

Moody assigns a new sergeant to me, a young graduate named Clayton who has been fast-tracked and doesn’t have much of an opinion of me until Hooper (of all people) sticks his head in the door asking me to translate a line SOCO retrieved from the pocket of a body. It’s in Hebrew, another language I have a basic smattering of, courtesy of my year in the seminary. That shuts my sergeant’s mouth for a bit, and he alternates between sulking and making snide comments. If you think that sounds familiar, you are wrong. I wasn’t like that. I was a brat, but I never resented my boss or tried to undermine him. I feel like I am curating a toddler. I make him conduct finger-tip searches wherever I can, and regularly delegate all the paperwork to him. Of course, I check everything afterwards, however he seems to have grasped the concept of filling in boxes. I imagine Jean Innocent shaking her head at me. I remain aloof and curb all visible signs of my irritation with him. I think he hates this even more, his inability to rattle me. I want to fire him out of a canon into the sun, instead I make a point of thanking him and telling him when he has done good work.

I sit in the allotment at night, it’s always evening there now. I listen to the silence and smoke cigarette after cigarette while I replay all Lewis’s life advice to me: _you need a partner, why d’you have to be better? Go through that door, look the man in the eye, or it will be stuck in your head forever more._ That last one was about Fiona McKendrick. I still have no idea what he thought he was getting at. I’m not sure any more that Robbie ever really understood me. Why did I attach myself to him the way I did? Was I that desperate for acceptance that I fell for the first person who gave me that? Did I sabotage my career out of misguided infatuation? It seems to be more and more likely the longer I think about it. He’s blameless in this, of course. I convinced myself that working with him was what I wanted out of life; I put on the brakes on my career and tried to run in one place forever. Now I am reaping the consequences of that choice. Lewis could have pushed me harder to advance my career, but I would have pushed back. I already had everything I wanted. Now I have none of the things I thought I had, I realised too late that the pleasure I took in my job came from working with him. Sometimes I think I would like to pack it all in and serve drinks behind a bar, but I suspect that even in Oxford there is a limited demand for bartenders who quote T.S. Eliot and whose cocktail-making repertoire is limited to pouring gin and tonics.

Eventually, I get an email from Laura and Lewis saying that they will be back in Oxford on Friday. I book the day off, run the vacuum cleaner around their carpets and buy some basic groceries to tide them over their first twenty-four hours home. I am not particularly in the mood to pull out the ‘Lewis’ sign again, but I suspect that it’s non-appearance may be taken down as evidence that I am having another bout of the existential flu, so I dutifully make a new one, this one stating ‘Hobson & Lewis’. I am unexpectedly nervous waiting for their flight to land, and then suddenly there they are in front of me after all these months. Laura gives the sign bearing her name in pride of place a grin, and then comes to me and gives me a hug.

“James, we missed you.”

“I missed you,” I say with a smile for her.

Lewis brings up the rear with the trolley bearing their luggage and smiles at me too, “Good of you to come and fetch us,” he says. He looks tired, and I say, “Let’s get you home, you must be exhausted after that flight.”

Lewis agrees, “I was beginning to think it would never end. I was worried I’d never be able to stand again.”

Laura’s evidently heard this several times in the last twenty-four hours and raises her eyebrows and sighs. I take the trolley from Lewis’s unprotesting hands and push it ahead of them to the car. The trip back to Oxford is filled with running commentary about Laura’s family, the New Zealand landscape and the expensive trip to Hobbiton taken under protest because Robbie's daughter Lyn had asked them for photographs and a souvenir. Laura sighs in relief when her house comes into view and beams at me when she sees that her garden is pristine and her house is spotless.

“There’s a cottage pie in the fridge that just needs warming up,” I tell her, “and I bought you some bread and milk and eggs, that sort of stuff, so you don’t have to brave Tesco straight away. They both look as relieved as they look weary.

“I’ll make you some tea,” I say, “and then I’ll leave you to recover from the flight.”

Laura pats my arm in gratitude and Lewis gives me a “Good lad,” before lowering himself onto the couch.

Overall, they look happy and suntanned. I pour them their tea and then take in their worn-out expressions and say, “Right, I’ll leave you to get settled. Glad you’re back. See you soon.”

I leave their house feeling strangely disappointed. It’s not as if I was expecting anything in particular, and I know they must be ragged after flying across the globe. But our old familiarity seems to be gone.

That night I visit the allotment again, and I remember the image of Lewis sitting in the chair smiling at me lazily with love in his eyes. I find I have tears in mine. I come to a decision. My hasty resolve to leave my father’s inheritance to my sister has put paid to any hope I might have of buying my own home in Oxford, but perhaps I can have an allotment, a real one. Maybe real earth and real plants will help rid me of the ghosts of the imaginary one.

I decide not to call them in the morning. They will need a few days to recover anyway.

I bump into Laura first on a fresh crime scene.

“Back in harness so soon?” I say.

She grimaces and shrugs, “That was the deal.” 

She says nothing more on the subject, but I suspect that Laura doesn’t like pottering around at home aimlessly any more than Lewis does.

“What happened to Maddox?” she asks, seeing the sullen Sergeant Clayton trailing behind me.

“She and Tony decided that the living apart for the sake of career advancement episode of their marriage was over. She’s transferred to Edinburgh.”

“And him?” she gestures slightly unsubtly.

“Dr Hobson, this is Sergeant Clayton,” I introduce them formally.

Clayton looks disdainful, but he shakes her hand politely and his accent gets a little more snotty as if to impress on her his superior education.

This goes over as well as you’d imagine with Laura, never one herself to try to impress on others her own Oxford education.

“Robbie has some new barbecue recipes he brought back to try out on us,” she announces out of the blue, “You must come over as soon as he has his grill up and ready. I refuse to be the lone test guinea pig.”

I chuckle at her and we part ways.

“You know her well, sir?” Clayton asks with an air of judgement.

“She and her partner are old friends of mine,” I find myself saying. I sincerely hope that Laura doesn’t feel inclined to include Clayton in any invitations, otherwise I will have to come down with a twenty-four hour brain tumour or something. Dear God.

Lewis reappears in Thames Valley CID a week later. Moody has plans for him that don’t involve working alongside me, but he pops his head round my door halfway through the week around five thirty and says “Pint?”

“God, yes,” I say and shrug on my coat, nod curtly at Clayton and leave my sergeant behind me.

“This isn’t a Lizzie version two situation, is it?” he asks noting the decided lack of pleasantries between Clayton and me.

“Certainly not,” I manage to sound offended. “Maddox and I just had to get used to each other.”

“Laura wasn’t keen on him either.” Lewis confides.

“That’s because Laura has good taste,” I reply.

He laughs at me, and for a moment it feels like old times. But when we are settled in the pub with our drinks, it starts to feel strange again.

“So,” I say, “tell me about New Zealand.”

“It was good,” he says, in that casual, infuriatingly vague way he sometimes has. “It was really for Laura, her family and all. But it was good.”

It’s hard to get words out of this man sometimes. A memory from long ago, when Innocent forced him to give a speech surfaces and I chuckle.

“What?” he says.

“Just remembering Innocent having to resort to threats to get you to give that talk.”

He laughs along with me.

“Don’t remind me. That was terrible.”

“As I recall, it went over rather well.”

“Only because I bribed me sergeant into writing it for me,” he says chuckling.

I smile remembering that day in another pub, over a different pint. Lewis had literally saved my career, such as it was, and I was stunned and grateful. He had brushed it off as though it were nothing. It suddenly reminded me why I had fallen in love with him. It wasn’t about working with him, although I enjoyed that. It was his kindness and his generosity. I brought my thoughts to a screeching halt. This wasn’t helpful, it was not what I needed to think about, especially not with Lewis sitting right next to me on a bar stool at the counter.

“You alright, lad?” Lewis is looking at me with slight concern.

I shake my head. Then I nod.

“I’m fine. I was just remembering. I miss those days.”

“Me too,” he says. “We had fun.”

Much as this is a balm to my battered ego, we are verging on dangerous territory again.

“Still, you’ve been having all new kinds of fun lately.”

“Aye,” he says, “good to be back though. It was lovely, but I missed you. I missed Oxford.”

This is really bad for me, but I am delighted to hear it.

“I missed you too,” I say, unable to contain my smile at him. His body is right next to mine and I can smell his familiar scent, and I can feel myself falling, falling. All the distancing I have convinced myself of in the last few weeks has dissolved, and I am basking again in being with him. He gives me a smile and then he shrugs.

“I’m glad we did it, but it made me appreciate here even more. This is home. This is where my good memories are. And some bad, I s’pose.”

It’s rare for Lewis to speak so openly about feelings. It’s something that we typically didn’t do, except when I was getting one of his patented counselling sessions that I dreaded and resented. Talk about the blind leading the blind. But he’s not finished yet.

“Laura once said to me that you wouldn’t know how I felt about you unless I told you.”

I frown, wondering when this discussion had taken place. Was I often the subject of their conversation?

“She was right, of course. I know I don’t always say the right thing. My generation, we didn’t get encouraged to talk about our feelings. Not to another bloke, anyway. But being away for six months made realise that I should have told you, lad. You know you’re my best friend, right?”

I don’t really know how to reply to that, words won’t form in my mouth, so I smile at him.

“You’re mine too,” I say eventually, “my best friend.”

“Working with you was the best time I ever had as a copper, I selfishly wanted to keep it like that for as long as possible.”

My heart wants to burst, but I settle for murmuring “Me too.”

“I should have pushed you to do your OSPRE sooner. Instead I held you back, just like Morse did to me. I regret that. You deserved better from me.” He’s looking earnest and sad now and I have to stop him.

“I wouldn’t have gone. I wanted to stay too,” I say. “I was happy where I was. So you have nothing to be sorry for.”

He looks at me for a moment, and nods, accepting my confession. We’re both feeling a little uncomfortable now, emotions having risen to the surface.

“And I’m sorry about your dad. You shouldn’t have been alone.”

“That wasn’t your fault,” I say. I gulp at my beer and he notices my discomfort and pats me on the back. I unconsciously lean into his hand craving the touch. It’s been a long time since either of us touched each other and I realise I am starving for it.

“Anyway,” he continues, “I’m back now, and I’m looking forward to seeing more of you again, even if Moody won’t put us together on a case.”

I continue to sip at my pint, trying to put myself together so that I don’t blurt out something compromising. He lets me drink in peace.

“Makes sense, I s’pose,” he continues. “Got enough experience between the two of us now to want to spread us around.”

I find my tongue at last.

“I’d trade it all in to work together again, I don’t want to be spread around,” I admit with a smile.

He smiles back and nods.

“Unfortunately, James, I don’t think that’s how it works,” he says with a grin.

“Maybe it should,” I say.

He nods.

“Maybe so. Can I offer you a barbecue this weekend as a compromise?”

I can’t contain my laughter at the incongruity of this offering, and he smiles happily at me.

“Hello, boys,” Laura appears behind us and kisses me and then Robbie on our cheeks. “Buy a girl a drink, would you?” she instructs Robbie and he motions for the bartender’s attention.

“Has he threatened you with the barbecue yet?” she says to me.

I give her a grin and a nod and watch these two bickering over small change with a smile on my face. They are my strange little family, the one I chose myself.

I finally get my allotment. It’s mine, I actually bought it. It even has planning permission to build, but it’s too small and there wouldn’t be any garden if I did that. For a while I don’t tell Robbie about it. It’s too personal, too tied up in my private longings and for a long time I demur because I wonder if Robbie remembers that conversation all those years ago when he talked about our hypothetical future together. Of course he was only joking, I was the one who really wanted it. I half hope he’s forgotten that conversation ever happened, because I don’t want to cast a fresh awkwardness over us. Over the winter I lay down the groundwork, retreating into the container cabin on site when the weather turns inclement. It’s not particularly pretty, but it has mains for water and electricity so I can make coffee and read inside. In spring I plant some flowers. I have no use for carrots, but there are a few vegetables in the little glasshouse I set up in the sunny corner of the plot. The garden becomes my retreat when I need to be alone, whenever I am not over at Laura and Robbie’s place. My skin darkens with all the sun I’m getting and I get stronger with all the physical exertion of gardening. I finally tell them. Laura receives my news with polite interest, she has her own garden after all, but it’s not a great passion of hers and she has a garden service come in twice a month to keep it in shape, apart from the lawn-mowing duties assigned to Robbie. She immediately volunteers Robbie’s services which he protests about but his eyes are twinkling and I can see he likes the idea.

As summer arrives he joins me there one morning when we’re both off work, hat on his head, cooler bag in one hand and a basket in the other in which Laura has packed some sandwiches and teacakes. He takes out a small radio and plops it down on the table and tunes it to a cricket match. I start laughing and refuse to explain. He scowls at me and tells me I am a barbarian with no culture. I show him around the garden plot and I can tell he is getting ideas as his eyes start to sparkle and he starts to explain what he thinks we should plant and what needs to be removed. We’re both fairly grimy by the time hunger overtakes us and we have to wash our hands under the hosepipe before diving into the food Laura has prepared for us. The sun is warm and we retire to sit in the shade under a pergola. Lewis tips his hat over his eyes and every so often I hear a soft snore that rises above the sounds of the cricket. I grin at him fondly and open my book and settle back to read.

**Author's Note:**

> The quote at the beginning of this story is from _Great Expectations_ by Charles Dickens.
> 
> Note: mentions of self-destructive behaviour, but nothing graphic.


End file.
